Against Neoliberal Enclosure: Using a Critical Transdisciplinary Approach in Science Teaching and Learning

Strong, LaToya; Adams, Jennifer D.; Bellino, Marissa E.; Pieroni, P; Stoops, Jennifer; Das, Atasi

doi:10.1080/10749039.2016.1202982

Cited by 45 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…That calls for an ethical research practice, protected against neoliberal re-enclosure (Meckesheimer 2013;Strong et al 2016) to enable td researchers to make decisions without competitive pressure and not to set numerical optimal solutions but an 'ecology of practices' as a standard (Stengers 2005;2010). The speculative is therefore no challenge to climb the highest mountain but to invent other mountain worlds.…”

Section: Methodological Problematicmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Problematic of Transdisciplinary Sustainability Sciences

Meyer¹

2020

Edition Moderne Postmoderne

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Section: Methodological Problematicmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Problematic of Transdisciplinary Sustainability Sciences

Meyer¹

2020

Edition Moderne Postmoderne

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“…It may also take more mundane forms: a student who has a background in crafting ceramics would not typically have the opportunity to use these skills to explore chemical reactions in chemistry class, and instead would be restricted to experiments with certain pre-made materials and representations (e.g., pipetting mixtures, numerical weights of chemicals). To achieve the liberatory potentials of disciplines while addressing the constraints, researchers have called for disciplinary integration as an approach to education that could break down hegemonic infrastructures for knowing and doing Kidron & Kali, 2015;Kwon, Wardrip, & Gomez, 2014;Sengupta et al, 2019;Strong et al, 2016).…”

Section: Background and Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…heterogeneity in student voice can support navigation of multiple epistemic perspectives and expansion of who belongs within the contributing disciplines (Bang & Marin, 2015;Tzou et al, 2019;Strong et al, 2016). Making disciplinary hegemony visible can benefit students (e.g., by broadening participation) and expand disciplinary boundaries, such as in work that challenges computing education to sustain and embrace Indigenous language and representational approaches in addition to Western computational abstractions (Lam-Herrera, Council, & Sengupta, 2019) or art education that engages with new processes for making art, such as using data-driven generative investigations, combining them with traditional crafts like weaving (Coats, 2020;Smith, 2017).…”

Section: Background and Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Making disciplinary hegemony visible can benefit students (e.g., by broadening participation) and expand disciplinary boundaries, such as in work that challenges computing education to sustain and embrace Indigenous language and representational approaches in addition to Western computational abstractions (Lam-Herrera, Council, & Sengupta, 2019) or art education that engages with new processes for making art, such as using data-driven generative investigations, combining them with traditional crafts like weaving (Coats, 2020;Smith, 2017). For example, Strong et al (2016) describes an environmental science class project that used a photography-based investigation of a research question in a local area to reimagine what "environmental issues" were by recentering student voices and narratives in the project. We find that these projects highlight elements of transdisciplinary learning such as liberating disciplinary boundaries and critical reflexive examination of hegemonic practices.…”

Section: Background and Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Luminous Science: Teachers Designing For and Developing Transdisciplinary Thinking and Learning

Finch

Moreno

Shapiro

2021

Cognition and Instruction

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Creating learning environments that integrate arts, sciences, and computing in education can improve learning in these disciplines. In particular, transdisciplinary integrations of these disciplines can lead to expansive alterations or dissolutions of epistemological, ideological, and methodological boundaries. We wish to support teachers in the creation of transdisciplinary learning environments that draw on art, science, and computing. We developed a classroom project genre, Luminous Science, that was designed to bridge disciplinary materialities, epistemologies, and representations through students' construction of computationally-rich representations of physical phenomena. We present a study of a multidisciplinary group of teachers co-designing a Luminous Science unit for their classrooms using sculptural lanterns with programmable media for both investigations and expressions of classroom gardens. We present a framework for examining what disciplinary understandings teachers drew on, how these ideas were utilized, and why they were brought together. We found teachers engaged in richly metarepresentational discussions wherein they applied values, epistemic criteria, and practices from all three constituent fields of study in their design work. We show how teachers developed units that simultaneously overlapped and diverged due to the pressures of navigating disciplinary and school structural challenges. Qualitative analysis of teacher discourse reveals how teachers liberated disciplinary boundaries, actively and critically explored synergies and tensions in disciplinary integration, and traversed goals that focused on both disciplinary improvement and holistic learning. Our study sheds light on how we can both study teachers who are designing for disciplinary integration and support them through professional development opportunities to encourage more transdisciplinary interactions that can expand what it means to do or teach art, science, and computing.

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“…corporatizing sectors. Other researchers (Strong & Das, 2018;Strong et al, 2016) point out that, as schools adopt neoliberal narratives, they also rationalize norms and values into the STEM curriculum: competitive (entrepreneurial) individualism, the atomization of social actors, and attempts to apply homogenizing principles to the world in ways that foster a logic of globalization, rather than an ethos of locality, community and conviviality (Massey, 2004;McCarthy & Prudham, 2004;Robertson, 2017). This poses dilemmas for movements seeking to reassert community identity, place-based work and grassroots empowerment.…”

mentioning

confidence: 97%

Pathways to sustainable futures: A “production pedagogy” model for STEM education

Alonso-Yanez

Thumlert

Castell

et al. 2019

Futures

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STEM education initiatives currently pervade the global landscape of educational reform. Unfortunately, the rush to adopt STEM reforms in North American schools and develop students for competitive 21 st century knowledge economies has encouraged an uncritical embrace of underlying STEM narratives and purposes, thus foreclosing critical discussion, alternative models, and new perspectives on doing science education differently. Here, we unpack narratives and practices informing STEM education that induct learning actors into 'anticipatory regimes' that advance neoliberal ends and technocapitalist ideologies. We argue first that STEM narratives of progress, competition, and innovation increasingly obscure the urgent ecological, ethical and social justice conditions students confront daily. Ironically, this prepares them for a future rendered unsustainable by scientific and technological orthodoxy. We then draw upon critical sustainability studies (CSS) to articulate new axiological orientations that reposition science and technology learning. Lastly, we describe and illustrate an approach aligned with these critical principlesproduction pedagogywhose theories and practices re-vision science and technology education. These strategies will situate students in agentive roles now, in this present, using realworld tools in authentic sociotechnical contexts. They can then confront their own capacities and limitations to engage in personally relevant ways, as producers, with techno-scientific knowledge. IntroductionPolicy and initiatives advancing STEM education are pervasive within the global landscape of educational reform. While STEM policy documents provide rationale for ratifying new curricula that can deepen students' engagement in the sciences, mathematics, engineering, and technology fields, STEM education discourses largely fail to translate innovations in policy into innovations in pedagogy, and neglect, as well, theoretical and epistemological advances in conceptualizing the impacts of science and technology in physical, social, and symbolic worlds (Murphy, Firetto, & Greene, 2017; Rudolph, 2008;Zeidler, 2016). At the same time, the urgency to adopt and implement STEM reforms in North American schools has resulted in an uncritical embrace of underlying STEM aims and purposes, in turn foreclosing dissent, critical discussion, alternative models, and new perspectives on how we might 'do' science, and (STEM) education, differently.

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Against Neoliberal Enclosure: Using a Critical Transdisciplinary Approach in Science Teaching and Learning

Cited by 45 publications

References 24 publications

The Problematic of Transdisciplinary Sustainability Sciences

The Problematic of Transdisciplinary Sustainability Sciences

Luminous Science: Teachers Designing For and Developing Transdisciplinary Thinking and Learning

Pathways to sustainable futures: A “production pedagogy” model for STEM education

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